Overview

• Harald Schmidt says he can imagine Olaf Scholz looking at successor Friedrich Merz with a measure of Schadenfreude.
• He puts Scholz’s imagined thought as, “Fritze, das hast du dir anders vorgestellt!”
• Schmidt argues Merz has so far received chiefly approval on foreign policy, quipping that success means visiting the White House without being thrown out.
• Speaking as a retiree, he says he is very satisfied with the schwarz-rote federal government because pension payments have risen well above inflation.
• The remarks were given to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur in Cologne and were picked up by outlets including Die Zeit, Stern and the Frankfurter Rundschau.